SPI 871: If You’re Grinding Alone But Want to Win, Listen to This

SPI 871: If You’re Grinding Alone But Want to Win, Listen to This

Pat Flynn: When you hear the word solopreneur, what does that mean to you? For me, I thought that was a sense of pride of not just being your own boss, but doing something on your own. Being able to figure it out yourself without any other help. That’s what I thought solopreneur used to meant. So I really took pride when I started my own business that I was doing everything myself. I was doing the website building myself. I was doing the podcast editing myself. I was doing the graphic design myself, and I was doing everything I could to fill in the gaps and learn more for the skills that I was falling short for. But I soon found out about a year and a half later that that was going about it the wrong way.

If you are doing this alone, but you wanna win, you must listen to this episode because, hey, spoiler alert, you will not be able to do it alone. Now, there’s a lot of reasons why a lot of people want to do something on their own and don’t welcome outside help. For me in particular, it was again that sense of pride that came with starting something on my own.

I had just gotten laid off. I was kind of upset at other people who was doing work with me. Of course, my boss who let me go. And just the industries that I was in in general. So in this new space in entrepreneurship and building my own business in the architecture world, helping people pass an exam, I was like, you know what?

Just let me take control, because if I fail, it’s gonna be just my fault and I’m not gonna let anybody else touch this stuff. It’s gonna be on me a hundred percent. And if I win, it’s gonna be all me. If I lose, it’s gonna be all me. At least I’ll have control. And that was my mindset back then. I thought solo was better ’cause it was cheaper.

Hiring other people was going to cost money. And in the early days, that was money that I didn’t necessarily have. And even when I started to generate some revenue, it was money that I didn’t want to spend. And it’s also something that involves other people, and it’s somebody who is an introvert by nature, I was like, well, I, does it make sense to do everything on my own because. ‘Cause people, right. You ever see that meme? It’s like, what’s wrong people? It’s like a baby looks over, it’s at something troublesome and the mom goes, what is it? And he goes, people. Totally relatable. So yes, I eventually learned my way out of this.

I’ll give you some of the specific moments where I learned that this was not the right mindset in some of the other things that have happened since, but more than that, I want to work with you today, not just through. How to get over wanting to do things on your own and maybe, you know, you shouldn’t do things on your own, but you’ve had some trouble finding other people to work with.

And how do you go about connecting with others? How do you go about finding those who will support you and also help you rather than wasting time maybe connecting with other people? I know a lot of people when I speak about this topic with others, they also have tried working with others and opening up a little bit only to get burned.

One way or another burned because the person that they maybe worked with or hired wasn’t really worth that time and or money, or in worst cases, people who’ve done nefarious bad things and you open up a little bit of trust with others and then they just turn their back on you. It’s no surprise that you’re anxious about working with other people, but you cannot do this alone.

There are so many benefits to do it, and a lot of hidden costs of just going solo. So by the end of this episode, again, you’ll have a clear roadmap for finding your ideal collaborative partners. And it doesn’t necessarily mean somebody that you’re going to officially partner with or share part of the business with, just somebody to collaborate with, right?

And I’ll share the exact process I used to find people who’ve helped me 10 x my growth. And you’ll not just learn why collaboration matters, but how to do it right. And for me, this kind of started the whole collaboration process started at more the micro level. This is the other important lesson here.

You don’t have to go huge and just kind of like open up yourself and be completely vulnerable and give away your entire business and control of it to others. That’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about the idea of allowing yourself to let go of some things and to also allow other things in.

You’ve heard me say this time and time again if you’ve listened to the show before. You can’t read the label when you are inside the bottle. You need other people on the outside to point things out to you that might be obvious to them, but not so obvious to you because you’re so deep into the work that you’re doing.

The other thing is that there are mastermind groups. We talk about mastermind groups, and in fact, we inside of the SPI Community, connect you with other people who are like-minded, who can support you, and you can support them and hold each other accountable. All those good things that come with community.

We support that at our Accelerate and our Thrive tiers. We do mastermind matching, but you don’t necessarily have to go even that formal, just again, finding other people to collaborate with and work with, whether that’s teaming up on a project, collaboration on a video, or just continual conversation over time to help each other out.

Again, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are building a team. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you are giving up as part of your business. All this means is you gotta get out of that little box that you’ve put yourself in and connect with others. Right. So let’s talk about some of the hidden costs of going solo.

There’s a limited perspective cost. This is what I was just talking about, the fact that you cannot read the label when you are inside the bottle. The unknown unknowns problem, right? You don’t know what you don’t know, and a lot of solopreneurs often solve the same problems that others have already solved.

So wouldn’t it make sense to potentially find somebody else who’s already gone down that same path that you have who has already gone through the trouble of figuring things out. Absolutely. And there it’s a bit of an echo chamber effect on your own ideas without that external input, and in the world of entrepreneurship where failing and making mistakes is a part of the process because learning, learning along with others is gonna be the best way to rapidly see positive change. There’s also an emotional toll that comes with doing things on your own. There’s a decision fatigue factor when all the choices rest on your shoulders. Even just the mere idea of sharing some things that you might be working on, working with others to share different scenarios and to just get an opinion on stuff can help release a lot of that decision fatigue. You will find yourself that when you’re working solo, and this was a big thing for me. That you will continue to question every move that you make yourself, and you just start to spiral down and get in your own way. And that imposter syndrome starts to intensify without that peer validation from the outside.

And there’s also, of course, the emotional toll that comes with just kind of lonely. Going down that road without anybody else to talk to about the things that you’re doing, both the failures and the wins, nobody to share it with. Having somebody to share those wins with is just as important as somebody to share those failures with, who will understand what you’re going through, who know the same language, and understand the trouble that you’re going through and can potentially help you.

I gotta say, there’s a good friend of mine in the Pokemon space, Alex Hodges. I’ve talked about him a couple times recently. He had a quote recently that was really helpful for anybody just getting started, and that is count uploads, not likes or count uploads not views, and that just means keep hitting upload, get those reps in.

You’ll learn faster that way. And I truly believe that. And so Alex and I text each other almost every day about our Shorts channels and things that we’re learning. And today, I’m not gonna reveal exactly what he sent, but he sent something that was a little bit more of a, a mindset issue that he was thinking about, and I share a lot of the same things with him.

And just again, to get that feedback is really key. And I welcome it from him and he welcomes it from me and it’s a perfect scenario. Is he a part of my business? No, but he’s a partner and a friend and a collaborator who we both know that we can both help each other out along the way, which is important.

And I don’t feel alone when trying to do what I do, and neither does he because of that. So even just that alone can help release us from a lot of that loneliness. And there’s also the common solo misconceptions that many entrepreneurs who are doing it on their own come across, which is, for example, these quotes.

I need to perfect my idea before sharing it. I’ve fallen into that trap before. I’ve told a story of my $15,000 lesson of keeping a new idea, a WordPress plugin inside and secret. And only when I shared it did I understand that it was actually going down the wrong direction. And the plugin never saw the lead of day because it just wasn’t a good product.

If only I had shared that idea beforehand, and I talk about that in my book, Will It Fly? and that’s exactly the reason why I wrote Will It Fly, is you can validate your ideas upfront and there’s no way you can do that on your own, sharing your audience will dilute your influence. That’s a common misconception.

You have to have the opposite, which is an abundance mindset. Alex and I, we have a lot of crossover audiences, but it does not dilute our influence. When we share that audience with each other, it’s not like a poker table where if Alex wins or if you win, that means I’m losing, or if I’m winning, that means you are losing.

We live in this world where there is an abundant amount of success that can happen for multiple people at the same time, and I know it’s counterintuitive. I know it logically sometimes doesn’t make sense, but it is the way. To quote the Mandalorian, this is the way. The trap of believing that nobody else understands your unique ideas or vision, right?

This is a common thing you might say to yourself, well, no one understands what I’m doing here. Like no one gets me. I’m so unique in my ideas or the direction I’m going, that it’s not worth talking to other people. This is your ego talking more than anything, and these are the costs of staying solo or going at it alone.

Now, let’s talk about the benefits of collaboration and the advantages of that. So there’s the idea of networking versus collaborative relationships. Right. So networking. This is what I wanna stay away from this word. Networking. Even though networking is a positive thing, yes. In general, it is a thing that business owners know that they need to do because connections, right, and connections can lead to partnerships, it can lead to transactions, it can lead to more money.

But networking feels very transactional, right? It reminds me of the first times that I went to conferences and we were just exchanging business cards. It was very transactional. It was simply just getting to know people and going, Hey, if this is something you wanna continue working on, or you believe that there’s something here, gimme a call, and that’s it.

And you kind of never talk to each other again versus collaboration. Collaboration is transformational, not transactional. It’s the difference between surface level connections and deep working relationships. This is what you want, deep working relationships. And so there is a transition, however, between networking to collaboration, networking is a great starting point.

It’s a great way to almost speed date around your niche, if you wanna call it that, so that you can find the ones who you might wanna go deeper with. And it’s that follow-up that’s really key. Transitioning from those casual contacts into collaborative partnerships. A lot of it is based on feel, yes, an aura that somebody else might have or some sort of feeling you get, and that’s important to note.

But the other important part is the actual follow through and opening up to receiving as much as you want to give. Now, there’s a lot of benefits beyond just sharing audiences when it comes to things like collaboration. Complimentary skills. Many people out there will fill knowledge gaps that you have.

And it would behoove you to believe that you are not all knowing. You are not omniscient. You have some flaws and you have some gaps. I do. Everybody does. And it’s by connecting with other people who can fill in those gaps and support them, or at least call them out even if you are blind to them, that can help you in so many different ways.

People can help you stay motivated during slumps. This is what I found that my mastermind group does really, really good for me. ’cause rarely do I go, Hey, what’s the strategy that I should use here, guys? And please tell me. That does happen every once in a while if I’m doing something new and other people who are in my mastermind groups, shout out to the Green Room and also my Monday Mastermind group with you know who you are.

If you have listened to this show, you know that I’m a part of two mastermind groups that have been around for over a decade each, and we meet weekly and we have been for over a decade. I love these people. They know me sometimes better than I know myself. And when I’m in a slump, these are the people that get me out of it.

There’s other people that I go to who I don’t formally chat with every week who do the same thing for me. Chris Ducker is a good friend over in the uk. He and I have been bestest of friends for such a long time, and we still connect and we help each other out. And we both have books coming out this year.

So we’ve been talking a lot about that recently. And we hope to meet up again later in the year in Tennessee for an author retreat, which is gonna be really fun. And then the sharing of resources. I mean, my gosh, even when I think of Chris, again, he’s shared so many resources, people, tools, even his own services like virtual staff finder, which he, I believe he mentioned, uh, publicly.

I think I could share this, that he recently sold, and I don’t think I’ve shared that here. I’d love to get him back on the podcast to talk about that. But congrats to my good buddy, Chris Ducker, for selling his virtual staff finder business. That is a tool and a resource that he had that he shared with me.

And he let me understand more about it and he gave me some insight on how to best utilize it because he and I were connected. And that wouldn’t have happened if I was just kind of a client or a customer. We became friends in 2010 when we met in an in-person situation. We were at Blog World Expo. I remember we were having, I remember it like it was yesterday.

We were in the Luxor Hotel and he was having an adobo for a meal when we met up for lunch. And that adobo reminded me of my Filipino wife, April, and he was like, I have a Filipino wife. And we connected there and we’ve been together since. Anyway, you have to go out there and begin to meet these people.

Though there are digital ways and virtual ways to do this too, and we’ll get into that. But again, going back to the benefits of audience sharing and collaboration, it’s the shared resources and tools. I remember very early on, back in the blogging days. I can’t remember who taught this. I feel like it was Glenn Allsop or Derek Halper, some of the older school bloggers.

ViperChill.com. Oh my gosh, I remember Viper Chill or SocialTriggers.com on one of these websites. I remember an article that was written about the importance of having a person in the same niche as you to sort of grow together with. And the example that was used was Get Rich slowly by a man named JD Roth, one of the original financial blogs that I used to read.

And Trent Desmond from Simple Dollar. Those two started out their personal finance blogs right around the same time, early two thousands. And grew together. They shared ideas, they collaborated, although on the surface from the outside, it might look like their competitors. No. In fact, their growth only happened because they were working together, collaborating, and yes, sharing audiences at the same time, but also both as a result of their connected power, finding newer audiences together to serve and understanding what worked in the blogosphere and understanding search engine optimization, sharing tips with each other and very much so.

And the most important thing was rooting for the other person, and that to me is the most important thing when it comes to these partnerships, these collaborations, the idea that it’s not just you, it’s somebody else too, but you wanna root for them just as much as they’re rooting for you. Now, there’s a few types of collaborative relationships that we could talk about.

There’s the peer collaborators. You’re at the same level, but you have different strengths. This is Alex and I in the Pokemon space. This is Chris and I in the entrepreneurial space. And I could go on and on with the number of different people, Michael Hyatt, Amy Porterfield, Ramit Sethi, all different skills, different superpowers and ways that I can help them and they can help me.

And these are relationships that were built over time. A lot of these relationships were built thanks to the podcast. Still a huge reason to start a podcast, and if you’re in our SPI community and you haven’t yet started a podcast, you always have access to the Power Up Podcasting. Podcasting course if for no other reason than to just give yourself a platform to connect with other people, you should start a podcast, right? And find other peers that you can bring on the show and build a relationship with. I mean, people like Shalene Johnson have been life-changing to know who have taught me so much, but we started a relationship on our podcasts together.

So go start a podcast if you haven’t already. It’s very, very simple. It’s not easy, but it’s simple, and we’re there to make it easier for you with our premier courses inside of our community.

There are mentorship collaborations, right? So these are experience exchanges where the others are different strengths and sort of you’re supporting each other, filling in each other’s gaps. A mentorship collaboration is somebody who has a lot more experience than you, who is where you wanna be and you are not close, but they can help you get there.

Many people want to mentor because they were once in a position that you were, and so sometimes it just takes an ask. Sometimes it takes payments. Sometimes it takes being in the right place at the right time. But I’ve found so many mentors along the way during different parts of my life who have supported me ever since I started my entrepreneurial journey.

All the way back to the Internet Business Mastery Podcast with Sterling and Jay. Those two were my very first two mentors, and I even paid a little bit to get even closer to them and get a little bit more help from Jeremy, especially, who had at one point moved to San Diego. And you’ll learn more about Jeremy if you haven’t learned about him through me in my upcoming book, Lean Learning. He is definitely featured in one of the chapters when it comes to getting things done. So mentorship, collaborations is key. Finding those people who are ahead of where you’re at, but on the same path who can help guide you, who become those people with the machete, who’ve already cleared a path for your safe travels.

Next is your accountability partnerships, right? This is where structure and commitment comes into play, where you are paying attention to what the other person is doing, and they’re paying attention to you and are there to lift you up when you need it. Not just morally, but just say, Hey, where is that post?

You said you were gonna post today, right? I have done the same thing with Alex. Alex and we, if we find that we’re. Maybe a little bit later with our posting on our daily posting schedule. We’ll check in with each other and just make sure, and I mean, I’ll tell you, when he checks in with me, I am motivated to make sure I stick with my streak and keep it going.

It’s not even in a competitive sense. It’s more of just, I don’t wanna let this person down kind of thing, and I wanna show up for them, and I wanna be at a good example for others too. So we have peer collaborators, your mentorship collaborations, your accountability partnerships, and then and I’ve talked about this already, your mastermind groups, so diverse perspectives.

In one setting, you’re not necessarily all at the same level. You may share some strengths, you might have different strengths. There is some structure in it as well, but there are many opportunities to learn cross industry. The example that I always use is there was a mastermind, well, in fact, one of the mastermind groups that I’m in had a member, his name was Roderick.

He was amazing. He was a performer, he was a hypnotist and a sword swallower. And you might be wondering, pat, what is the benefit of having a sword swallowing hypnotist in your mastermind group? Well, when I was learning how to speak on stage, guess who was the number one resource for me in that group to help me understand how to hold an audience’s attention, how to start a presentation, how to really keep people enthralled while you are presenting.

It was him. And so I learned so much from a sword swallowing hypnotist. And I remember he demonstrated this once we were in Vegas in a hotel room with a bunch of other people just kind of enjoying the evening after the day’s events. And he had brought a little sword to swallow, and I remember Jamie Masters was there, and I think she was the one that pulled the sword out of his mouth.

And it was just an incredible experience to see him actually do what he does. He did some hypnotism work there too. It was insane. It was absolutely insane. So let’s talk about how to find these amazing people. People who, when you are older and you’re sitting back and you’re thinking about all the fun business stuff that you’ve done, you can say, Hey, I remember that.

That was insane. You swallowed that sword. Now, I’m not saying go find sword swallowers, but maybe that’s relevant to you. But let’s talk about this. Where might you find potential collaborators. So let’s talk about a few of these things. Number one, industry specific online communities. Probably the easiest way to start building a connection.

You’re not just gonna go into these places and go, Hey, anybody here want to connect? Let’s do it. Although that is sometimes the case. It happens all the time here in the SPI Community because. These people who are in our community are filtered. They have a certain value, they come with certain energies, and that is you hopefully.

And if you are interested in our communities and coming in and joining other people like you, and you are fired up about starting your business and changing your life, head over to SmartPassiveIncome.com/community. So the SPI Community is great. Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, forums. As long as you continually show up, you’ll start to get to know people in there.

You’ll start to see the same people comment and start to get a vibe. Check on some of them, and just reaching out via a DM to start little connections or little groups. Group dms can be really, really great. Conferences and events are the next one. So Blog World Expo was absolutely huge. This is where I connected with a lot of people.

People who eventually not just became guests on my podcast, but like I said with Chris Ducker, somebody who’s become a lifelong friend, somebody who I trust my kids with, somebody who I can rely on and who I know will be there for me. This was a result of meeting somebody in person I’ve held. Events myself to allow for this to happen.

I do this now in the Pokemon space at Card.party if you wanna check out that. But you might go around and ask to see what events and conferences are available in your industry to people who’ve been in it for a while, or your mastermind group or other people who you connect with people in these online communities while often share what offline events they’re going to.

And this is a big thing. This is, I think, going to be one of the bigger things that are gonna help us really make true connections because the digital space is becoming more and more just commoditized and AI based and who knows who’s real. When you go and meet people in person, it can’t get more real than that.

And now obviously people can put up a front, and this is where starting those relationships matter. Don’t just like sign in paperwork and start a partnership right then and there. Get to know people. Go on a few quote unquote dates with them. Follow up with them online on social media. After the event, go have dinner together, whatever it might be.

And then there’s social media strategies that you can use for meaningful connections. This is where long-term work needs to happen. You can’t just find these people overnight, but if you are consistently showing up, you’re getting those reps in, you are staying on schedule. Eventually you’ll start to see people surface who enjoy your work, who might even start sharing your work, who might overlap with audiences with your work.

Those are good signals to go and start reaching out to them and make a connection potentially. Then even finally meeting in person at an event. That’s a great place to meet people who are our internet friends. Is that these events, it’s a good excuse to go out, but also a great way to start these real connections.

That could be life changing, like I said. So that’s where you might be able to find potential collaborators. Also, introductions through people who you already know is great. If you have a friend or somebody that you’ve been working with and you go, Hey. Who might be good to connect with that, you know, I’m not connected with yet.

Such a simple question that could lead to so much value, and it’s a value for your friend to make that connection because especially if it goes well, you know, it’s a value on every side, which is great. So a simple question like that, to find a connection, a first, second degree connection, can go a very, very long way.

Now let’s talk about some compatibility indicators. What are some things to look out for when you start reaching out and connecting and potentially collaborating with other people? Right. You want complimentary skill sets. I think, again, the vibe check is really important, which is why the in-person thing works so well.

But you can still get a vibe of somebody through connections digitally, that’s fine. But you wanna also see where you have overlapping expertise. Just because somebody else shares the same kind of ideas and skill sets you have, doesn’t mean you can’t collaborate with them. You might be able to, in fact, support each other really, really well in a more exponential way.

But at the same time, if you are finding that somebody has skills that you don’t, great. They can fill in those gaps and you can both compliment each other. Communication style is key too. I think that there might be some people who on paper would be incredible partners and collaborators for you, but then when you talk to them, it’s just the communication just isn’t there.

Or you’re in a different era sometimes, right? Uh, you see this a lot when older people are working with the more younger generation, they just don’t get it. They’re not even speaking the same language. This is something to look out for. This is where I find a lot of my friends who are a little bit older now, who are hiring much younger people, they often don’t have a great experience with that because I think it’s not even on either side’s fault. It’s just the expectation that both sides have about what they’re doing. Just more openness, more communication is, is required and sometimes it just doesn’t work out right.

That energy and the ambition matching is key. And then more than that, and something that’s important to us at SPI when especially we hire somebody or we collaborate with somebody. It’s just the values and ethics, consistency, right? We wanna make sure that we’re working with and partnered, whether we are an affiliate for somebody, whether they are a sponsor on the podcast, or a friend, or just a guest on the podcast, or just somebody that I connect with, they have values and ethics that align and are, you know, similar to mine or ours as a company, right? Our mission to help you get within reach of your goals and dreams that is important. And to do it in an ethic way, and to do it in a way that supports and serves others is important. And when we find that there are others out there who might be great to connect with, who have large audiences, who have skill sets that will compliment ours, they just don’t pass that ethics and values check. They’re doing it for the wrong reasons. Then it’s just, I mean, it’s hard, but it’s also easy just to say, you know what? This isn’t gonna work out. I’ve parted ways with several people who were once guests on, not the podcast, but this was back in the blogging days. There were a few people you might remember a name Tyrone Shum.

I haven’t brought that name up to light for so long, but I had been working with him a long time ago. This was back in the niche site, dual days. We were building websites, trying to see who could outrank each other, and it was really fun. It was fun for the audience to watch. And eventually after we started partnering together, we were gonna come out with a course together.

He had, I don’t know, a guilty conscience or something and decided to come out and say he was lying about all the numbers that he was sharing online. He was not, in fact, a six figure entrepreneur like he was saying. And he came out and because I was associated with him, I went down with him. And it took a long time to build that reputation back through just action. It was simply because I didn’t do proper due diligence with who I was partnered with and working with. And you know, thankfully we never launched that course. I pulled outta that immediately and kind of never talked to him again after that, after we parted ways. So, you know, it was a hard lesson, but one that I wanted to pass forward to you.

And when you collab, when you partner with somebody, you wanna make sure that it’s somebody who aligns with who you are and why you do what you do. This is the reason why I have said no to certain guests coming on the podcast before. Big name guests, celebrities that you, I’m guaranteeing have heard of before, especially in the entrepreneur space.

It just, they didn’t pass the test for me. And I think that’s important. The outreach, if you were doing this digitally especially, but it’s much easier in person. It’s much easier if you have somebody else introduce you to this person or these people. But digitally, the way you reach out’s gonna be really key, right?

There’s a value first context strategy that has to happen. If you simply reach out to somebody and say, Hey, I want you to be my partner. I want to collaborate with you. I want this, I want that. It’s never gonna come across well at all. A value first contact strategy is key. What does that mean? That means understanding what is of benefit for them.

What might you have to offer them because you know what they might need help with. You have followed along. You understand what maybe their shortcomings are or what their skills are and how you can compliment them. Just going to somebody because they have a lot of followers and you wanna collaborate is never going to work, and it’s always gonna come across selfish versus doesn’t matter how many followers you have, this would be a perfect partnership because of what you have to do and what you can do for each other.

Right? Just don’t be pushy. This is why introductions work really well. It’s just you kind of skip over that awkward introduction. And I know especially for introverts like myself, it can be very difficult, but it’s made it easier with the value first strategy and simply just finding out what they need help with first is often a great way to start a conversation.

I don’t even lead with, Hey, we should work together. We should partner together. I lead with, Hey, what can I do for you? Or, I noticed this about what you have going on and I feel like I could add some value here. Here’s what I understand about that. What do you think? If you need some more help, let me know.

This is what I did in the Pokemon Space. Value first asked nothing of others and only stepped up to serve other communities, other creators in the space, and then got a lot of love back, which has helped us launch Deep Pocket Monster into a 1.5 million subscriber YouTube channel in about four years.

It’s been amazing. Value first. Now let’s talk about some red flags. Red. Flags. These are things to look out for when you are working with somebody or thinking about working with somebody. Some indicators, if you will, to make sure that you kind of protect yourself and maybe say no, because it’s just not gonna work out.

The one-sided enthusiasm about collaboration. Now, these red flags, you can throw out these red flags too, so just keep that in mind. But if you seem to be excited about the collaboration, the partnership, the connection, the friendship, and they’re just not giving you that same energy, that’s a red flag. It doesn’t mean it’s not gonna work.

It means that maybe a conversation needs to be had. If you do some research and you find that there’s a history of burned bridges, I know some people who have a large history of burned bridges, and I’m very weary of working with these people, even though I’m still friends with them, I know their past, and so I’m very, very worrisome about going hardcore with any partnerships with them.

I’m not gonna mention any names, of course, but just keep that in mind. Ask around, look at their LinkedIn profiles, go into their history of social a little bit and, and see if there is anything worth worrying about. There was a creator in the Pokemon space that had offered me a lot of product to give away.

It was a very kind thing to do, and it didn’t take very long to deep dive into their Instagram history and see that they were not treating their customers very well. And it was, very easy for me to say no to that. Right. Misaligned expectations about time commitment. Depending on which level of collaboration or partnership or just connection you’re working on, you need to make sure that no matter what it is, that there is a known expectation of time commitment, right?

So if it’s a mastermind group and it is gonna be once a week, then you both need to, or all of you who are in that need to commit to that and. There have been some people who have come into our mastermind groups before who just didn’t make that commitment, and they’re no longer there because masterminds do take some sort of commitment other times, which are more casual, like with Alex and I, there’s no known commitment.

We just kind of share things with each other as we learn about them, and that’s been really cool. And then the idea of credit taking versus credit sharing tendencies. If you start to find that this other person is learning from you, they’re getting inspired by you, but then they don’t tend to credit you for what you’ve done for them.

And of course, same thing goes the other way. Make sure you credit the other person or other people when they’ve helped you. Boy, have I seen this in the Pokemon industry. Some of it’s just common sense. Which some people don’t seem to have and others just need to learn and have learned sometimes the hard way.

But that is a, again, a red flag. So it’s always good to start with more of a trial collaboration. If it might mean maybe just try a video or a podcast first before you kind of go all in. It might mean if you are thinking about creating a mastermind group, trying it for a month, four weeks straight and saying, Hey, if this doesn’t work out, we’re gonna be okay.

We’ll still be friends. It’s just, it’s not gonna work out. We’ll see what the vibe check is on both sides and we’ll agree that only if we both choose to want to continue to do this, that we do it because it won’t work if one of us isn’t into it. So having again, those conversations up front on a more structured type of collaboration is definitely key timeframe and kind of what you both expect to get out of it.

Having a time limited trial period to work together is, is really cool and works really, really well. Right? So that is collaborating and networking just from a high level, because I think, again, I’ve met so many people, even just recently, I think I, I don’t know why. I feel like we might be in a world now where we’re kind of afraid to open up and let others in.

When that is obviously a way to grow, but because of, I don’t know how easy it is to pretend to do things or pretend to be things, right? We have ai, I mean, sometimes we confuse AI for real people. I can understand why we don’t just kind of go out there, throw ourselves out there and try to make friends and, and meet and connect and collaborate and partner with people.

I get it. And hopefully this episode has helped you understand a little bit more, and at least inspires you to go out there and meet people. And again, if you wanna connect with other entrepreneurs specifically who can help you on your journey, please come over to the smart passive income community. If you go to SmartPassiveIncome.com/community, you can get involved.

You can join our accelerators, you can get access to the courses, yes. But most of all, find other people like you and begin to start those collaborative processes. So that is my action plan for you. If you are a solo grinder. First of all, do a little assessment to see if that is you. In fact, how much are you actually trying to connect with others?

And I want you to identify three potential collaborators, something that you might do some light work with in the near future and see how you might be able to reach out to them. It might not be something that you could do just immediately. They might be speaking at or attending an upcoming event. Um, but I would try to reach out digitally through social media in a direct message to one person by the end of the week. That’s it. And just connect, talk, see where it goes. You don’t even have to believe that this is gonna last forever. You don’t have to think that this needs to be super formal. I’m just encouraging you to go out there and meet other people. ’cause I’ve been asked this question before, pat.

If you could change one thing about you in your entrepreneurial journey, what would it be? What do you wish you had done sooner? It would absolutely be talking to more people, getting to know more people. You never know. That next person that you connect with could be the game changer. Thank you so much.

And remember, success leaves clues and the biggest clue is this, no one does it alone. I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for the people that I purposefully surrounded myself with, number one, but also that have unpurposeful who have just randomly entered my life too sometimes because those people took the initiative as well.

So thank you so much. Best of luck to you. Don’t go it alone. There are so many amazing people out there that you can connect with and get that support system started. Find those champions. Cheers.